Popular Science | What do the “three threads” in cotton yarn mean?

The “three fibers” of cotton refer to non-cotton fibers and colored fibers mixed into raw cotton that have a serious impact on the quality of cotton and its products, such as chemical fibers, hemp silk, plastic films, plastic filaments, cords, and cloth. Blocks, pieces of paper, and hair and down from animals such as humans, dogs, rats, chickens, ducks, etc.

Why does cotton yarn have three threads? At present, in the process of selling and using cotton yarn, the problem of three yarns has become a headache for everyone. 90% of the amount of three-filament yarn in cotton yarn is determined by cotton, and the amount of three-filament yarn in cotton is determined by the picking method of cotton. Machine-picked cotton can be wrapped with three-filament yarn, while hand-picked cotton is packed with cotton. Pockets, hair and some man-made impurities cause more three threads in cotton.

After the “three silks” are mixed into raw cotton, they change from long and large particles into short and small particles through the ginning process. These particles are then transformed into finer and finer particles through the spinning process. If raw cotton containing “three-filament particles” is used for spinning and weaving, the yarns spun and the cloths woven are prone to defects. During spinning, defects are wrapped in the lines or attached to the yarn, resulting in uneven evenness, increased end breakage rate, increased neps and impurity particles in the cotton yarn, reduced yarn strength and printing and dyeing effects, and reduced yarn and textile quality. Quality, cotton yarn and cotton cloth downgrading rates are still rising.

In order to reduce the “three wires” caused As the quality of gauze decreases, cotton spinning companies have to organize dedicated personnel to open the cotton bales one by one before feeding the cotton, tear and loosen the cotton bales one by one, and select the cotton bales one by one. They also clean the cotton bales at any time during each spinning process. As a result, costs have increased significantly, and the selection effect is still unsatisfactory. The downgrade rate of gauze is still rising, and user refunds occur from time to time, which has become a major obstacle to the export of textiles and clothing. It is understood that a medium-sized cotton spinning enterprise employs 300 to 400 workers every day and needs to pay 2 to 3 million yuan in salary every year. For example, in a cotton textile enterprise, the salary for picking lint is 0.45 yuan per kilogram, and the picking fee is 450 yuan per ton. This alone adds an additional cost of more than 2.7 million yuan every year. Although the spinning mill has spent a lot of manpower and financial resources, the effect is not ideal. Manually picking the “three yarns” is like finding a needle in a haystack, and the missed “three yarns” still exist.